


Like bees, their lives consumed by the sting they give

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Christianity, Demonic Possession, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for "In the Beginning." </p><p>Title taken from Emerson (<i>Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.</i>) </p><p>I wanted to explore a couple of things in this piece--possession and sacrifice--and how those are intertwined in SPN. I especially wanted to contrast the motivations of the three possessing beings we've spent the most time with since the show began.  This was written before the reveal about Ruby's character motivation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like bees, their lives consumed by the sting they give

1.  
From above, from another plane of existence, from Outside—Castiel watches. The man he watches is imperfect; his form is flawed. He is scarred. His face is asymmetrical. The nail on the third toe of his left foot is thick and diseased. The man is petty. He feels anger and fear and desire and lust. He disgusts Castiel.

Right now the man is singing. He sings poorly. “Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee; take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise,” he sings. 

The man believes the words he sings as much as a lowly creature can ever believe that he is worthy of notice, of Use, by a higher power, but Castiel is nauseated by the presumption. This, Castiel reminds himself, is prayer. A hollow gesture, impotent assumption, a few grains of sugar dissolving in an endless ocean—swine rooting for pearls.

The man sings, “Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love; take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.”

Castiel attempts to imagine himself occupying the space inside this man’s body—his less than six feet of height, his thirty-two inch waist, his size eleven feet. Castiel fails. The eternal, the vast, the terrible—such was not meant to be housed in so pitiful a vessel.

The congregation continues to sing and Castiel longs to silence their noise. “Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King; take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee,” they sing.

Castiel is the Messenger. He could speak but one word and all their ears would bleed. One word and this man that he watches would kneel and his face would scrape the dirty floor and he would know his place. Castiel does not speak. 

He waits until the final verse is completed: “Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine; take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne,” and then Castiel Becomes—a flaming sword, a pillar of fire, the Glory of the Lord—until all the man Was obliterates and Castiel Is in his wake.

2\. 

“Make up your mind, cheerleader,” Ruby says. “I don’t have all day.”

Krissy tugs at a loose thread on the hem of her tank, her knuckles smudged with bruises. “What will happen to me?’

Ruby sighs. This part is always such a bitch. “It’s not like I’m asking for your soul or anything. That’s yours, free and clear. I just need a new ride.”

Krissy gives her the once over and Ruby forces herself not to fidget under the scrutiny. “Why? What happened to the one you’ve got?” Krissy says.

And yeah. Ruby should’ve seen that coming a mile away. Krissy might be blonde, but she’s no dumbass. Ruby opens her coat, shows Krissy the dried blood on her shirt, the raw edges of a gut wound too large to heal or hide. “Kind of an occupational hazard in my line of work.”

Krissy says nothing, just stares at her beat up hands and chews on her split lip until it bleeds again.

“Look, sweetie,” Ruby says. “I could just take you. I could slither right in and you couldn’t’ do a damn thing to stop me. But I’m giving you a choice. What’s it gonna be?”

Krissy looks Ruby full in the face then, the five point star of a handprint in high relief on her cheek. “And you’ll punish him?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

Krissy closes her eyes and Ruby slips inside quick and easy like a blade between the ribs. Krissy struggles against her for a second, they all do, and then she’s quiet and still and small in the back of Ruby’s mind—a faint glow that’s only noticeable when she’s not looking for it directly.

On the way out, Ruby pins Krissy’s father to the wall and watches him squirm. “Not so much fun now, is it, asshole?” she says and then she snaps his neck. It’s anticlimactic, that sound—so insignificant, his last breath interrupted. 

Ruby can see herself reflected in the flatscreen TV—Krissy’s bruises that are already starting to heal, the sharp line of her jaw, the fragile bones of her clavicle. Ruby runs her hands through this new hair and smiles. It’s been a long time since she was blonde.

3\. 

Azazel slides into John Winchester like a pair of jeans, one leg after the other, stretching until he’s comfortable in Winchester’s meat suit. “Little roomy in the hips, don’t you think, John-Boy?”

Azazel keeps Winchester close, doesn’t let his consciousness slip into oblivion. He wants Winchester to feel every second of what’s to come. “Those boys of yours—my sweet, special Sammy. And Dean. Daddy’s perfect soldier. They’re on their way now. I’m going to feed you their flesh and pick your teeth with their bones.”

Winchester screams, a tinny sound, a sad little echo that reverberates in Azazel’s head. “Don’t be that way, Johnny,” Azazel says. “This is gonna be sweet.”

Winchester fights Azazel every second and it’s a hell of a fun game, keeping his speech patterns in check, wiping that shit eating grin off his face every time he thinks of the Colt. Azazel remembers the first time he ever saw Winchester, this lanky boy with a wholesome face and none of the stink of death on his skin. Winchester knew war; Azazel could see that clear as day, but Winchester wasn’t marked by it. He was saccharine, a whole mouthful of cane syrup, that boy. His neck snapped so pretty in Azazel’s hands; a wishbone, a divining rod, the very thing Azazel needed to get Mary Campbell on board. The man whose body Azazel now wears is nothing like that John Winchester and Azazel idly wonders if any of him is left.

“You want to know why Mary had to die, John? Because of you. She wanted you more than everything she’d been taught was good and right. She wanted you, and I gave you to her.”

Azazel isn’t surprised later when Winchester comes to him begging for a deal. No hunter needs to pull the trigger on his own gun to commit suicide; there’s world enough of evil to do that deed for him.

“Just like a Winchester,” Azazel thinks still later, when he smells the rot that sticks to Dean, when he sees the mark the crossroads demon left behind. “Just like a Winchester,” he thinks, and he doesn’t mean John-Boy.


End file.
